Hello from the Rat Wrangler

[camille1585]

Nice to see you back! The packrat situation sounds like a living, recurring nightmare... I can completely understand that you stopped buying new plants. I know nothing about these rodents, how on earth do they get into a closed house? They seem like rather large rodents. I'm also happy to hear that you are in good health, I always get a bit concerned when an OB regular goes missing for a while... Welcome back.

[estación seca]

Rats can squeeze through very small spaces. Many adult rats of all species can squeeze through a hole smaller than a US quarter or a 1 Euro coin. I have ventilation holes under the eaves of my house, covered with wire mesh to keep critters out. I think they pushed through some of the wire mesh, then entered the house around the clothes dryer vent.

[DirtyCoconuts]

Estacion, that is awful. i have a bit of advice from critter proofing and if they are pushing in the wire mesh, get copper mesh (it comes in a ball, not a sheet, and jam it into the hole and then spray the expanding foam into the hole....the mesh will hold the foam and make both impenetrable to rodents.


i also use and LOVE these a24 traps
Home Trapping Kit Goodnature A24 Rat & Mouse Trap | Automatic Trap – Automatic Trap Company

they are not cheap but kill 24 rats per CO2 cartridge, do not need to be reset and can be mess free (if you live where there are predators and scavengers about)

i also know that anything you can do to invite owls to your property and neighborhood will greatly reduce the number - i built an owl house and now have a screech owl in residence....she obliterates rats based on the bones in her pellets

[early]

ES, if packrats ate my orchids and other plants indoors, I would be crying. I am so sad for you. I live in the NM desert, I have only seen a rattle snake around one early spring. I have skunks, coyotes and Raccoons. One woke me up, when my two small dogs treed it. I dont do an outside garden, but plan to put down hardware cloth, to keep to praire dogs, voles and other critters from coming in to a raised bed. In the first 60+ years of my life I live in MO, NC and California, where there was good soil and I could grow anything. Good luck with the rat wrangling. I think DC has a good idea about the copper wire and foam.

[Arizona Jeanie]

ES, how did you trap the packrats? Any advice about what traps and baits work best would be greatly appreciated!
That A24 Automatic trap looks very interesting, maybe worth trying. I'm wondering if it works for packrats, as their habits are different from norway and black rats. After spending $500+ on car wiring repairs, the price doesn't look too bad! Thanks DirtyCoconuts, I had never heard of anything like this.
ES, glad you're back!

[estación seca]

What Arizona Jeanie refers to is the pack rat's habit of crawling up into engine compartments, starting to build nests, and eating all the plastic wire coating. It happens all the time to very many people. Several of my neighbors have had this happen in the last few months. They have eaten the wire coating of my irrigation control cables running from the automatic clock to the valves. They get into people's crawl spaces, eat wire coating and start house fires.

People who live around pack rats need to start their autos every few days and drive around a little to frighten off the critters. I have never had this happen because I almost always drive my vehicles every few days. I was extremely nervous when I was gone for that month, because that was plenty of time to destroy all the wiring under both my pickups. I got lucky. One time I took a truck in for a oil change, and the mechanic showed me a dried rat that had been trapped in one of the engine belts for some time.

I am going to use stainless steel brads to put 1/4" / 7.5mm mesh wire over the holes. They won't be able to push that in. They have already pushed in stainless steel wool pads for scrubbing anchored in the holes. I don't want to use the foam because the ventilation holes are needed to keep the roof dry.

Confirmed non-violent vegans, STOP READING NOW.

As to trapping them - they're very stupid and easy to trap, not like the European/Norwegian/black/roof/city rat. I once watched out my kitchen window as a pair of pack rats walked into a live trap. I regularly use Havahart live traps; various kinds of snap traps; and, recently, I bought one of the electric zapper traps on clearance at my local Ace hardware store. They all catch pack rats very easily. For bait I rotate between apple slices, leafy vegetable scraps, pieces of dog food, cheese rinds, peanut butter, raw baking flour, various kinds of nuts and a trap bait made by Tomcat. I look at what the rat has eaten recently in my house and put that in the bait. I think so far dog food, apple slices and the Tomcat bait have worked the best. Traps outdoors will also trap the destructive ground squirrels when baited with apple slices, since those are confirmed cactus eaters.

I don't buy wooden snap traps. They're fragile, designed for people who want to throw the rat and trap away together, and don't last very long. I'm not squeamish so I don't mind dropping the rat in the garbage bin, then washing the plastic trap. Victor makes a very nice and sturdy plastic snap trap with heavy stainless steel bar and spring. I bought Tomcat plastic snap traps with black bodies and white jaws at Home Depot a few years ago. Not long after that they had an identical trap with no brand name, probably a counterfeit. Those work very well, but I haven't seen them since.

Don't put out mouse traps for rats. The mouse traps disappear. I don't know whether it will kill the rat; I've never found them.

Just today I got home from work, prepared cream of watercress soup, and went to a potluck dinner. Returning home I discovered I had trapped the largest pack rat ever seen here. It was easily over a pound / 450g. It got caught in a plastic Victor snap trap I put on the floor in a door opened just a crack; I don't think it was after the bait, it just stepped on the trap that was in its way.

If you have European or city rats, your job is a lot harder. They differ by having completely naked tails, whereas the pack rat has some fuzz all along the tail. European rats can get much larger than pack rats. They are extremely skittish about changes in the environment. I have trapped those by setting out an unbaited live trap with no door; a few days later, I put some food a few feet away; when they took the food, each night I moved the food closer to the trap; I moved the food just inside the trap with no door; I moved it farther back into the trap; then I set the trap.

Another trap that works well takes up a lot more room. Take a deep plastic trash barrel that will hold water. Cut the ends off a large coffee or other metal can. Thread the can over a broomstick, and tape the broomstick over the barrel. Smear some peanut butter at the center of the can on the outside. Put the barrel near where rats are, and put some sort of ramp to the edge of the barrel. Put a foot / 30cm of water in the barrel. The rat walks out to the peanut butter, and the can spins the rat into the water. This can catch multiple rats in one night.

[Dollythehun]

I told you we all missed you! The Chief has been a trapping fool this year. Three raccoons and two woodchucks, and a family of well fed turkey vultures. (The circle of life and death.) Although the deer wandered through and ravaged the Ornipets and hostas. I use Liquid Fence for them. I'd quit gardening if I had pack rats.

[Subrosa]

I've had good success this season keeping squirrels and chipmunks out of my bog garden with a combination of a motion detecting sprinkler and outdoor cats. The sprinkler works as least as well as trapping and publicly crucifying a couple of the young of each year. However I suspect that a motion detecting sprinkler wouldn't be feasible in a desert environment, and might prove at least as much of an attraction as a deterrent.

[Ray]

The “rodents in the car” thing are not unique.

In PA, one climbed up in the rear wheel well of a BMW, made a nest and chewed through wires that affected several systems. $3500. She had babies in there, too.

Here in NC, a cotton rat (picture a squirrel with all but the last inch of its tail bare) climbed up in the engine compartment of my wife’s Toyota. Chewed wires, shorting a couple, required complete replacement of the main computer. $2700. I’m just glad that in both states, animal damage is covered under comprehensive insurance, making the deductible small.

My wife said, “but they’re so cute!”. My response: “Not with their head in a trap.”

[camille1585]

Not just rodents. Over here, martens like to chew through wiring. Apparently during breeding season male martens develop a sudden and intense dislike of car wiring. Luckily we only had a couple hundred euros worth of repairs, but the mechanic told us it could have been a lot worse.